>> Microsoft and Yahoo are going to try to work things out. Apple wants more ring tones. And another way to waste time on Facebook using Kongregate's new game play applications. It's Monday, May 19, I'm Natali Del Conte and it's time to get Loaded.
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>> Microsoft issued a statement on Sunday saying it still wants itself some Yahoo! The statement said that the two companies are exploring ways to work together that would not involve a full take over. The statement was very cryptically worded. Microsoft announced that it is continuing to explore and pursue its alternatives to improve and expand its online services and advertising business. Microsoft is considering and has raised with Yahoo! an alternative that would involve a transaction with Yahoo! but not an acquisition of all of Yahoo! Yahoo! released a subsequent statement that basically said, yeah, we're okay with that. This could mean a lot of things. We'll have to wait and find out. In other Yahoo! news, the company's mail blog announced late last week that it would ditch those annoying text ads that they used to put at the bottom of your emails. These ads were contextualized according to your content, but I think most people would agree they were pretty useless. I also can't imagine their click surveys were very high. I'm happy about this, but I'll take the tagline ads over the amount of spam that Yahoo! mail lets through. CNET is not the only new media company enjoying a proposal from old media. Ars Technica was purchased for an estimated $25 million by Wired. Wired is a Conde Nast publication, which means that Ars Technica staff will have free lunch like the rest of the Conde Nast family. I wonder if we'll get that when we all go to CBS. Speaking of CBS our soon to be parent company recently launched the CBS Audience Network. This is a video portal where the most popular videos are highlighted and commented on. CBS had partnerships to distribute videos from all over the web, YouTube, AOL, MSN, Joost, you name it. This portal allows these videos to be played, rent and commented on. It looks like it might be more useful for advertisers than for consumers, but nevertheless, I am hoping Loaded will make it there soon.
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>> Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University are working on robots that look and move like snakes. This sounds like a fun Lego project, but it's more than that. These snakes can actually be used for disaster recovery and invasive surgery. Kara Tsuboi has the story.
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>> What's nice about this robot is not only it can be thread through tightly packed volumes, but you can achieve a variety of locomotion capabilities that other mechanisms can't.
>> Inspired by snakes, Professor Howie Choset's robots are so cool and so mesmerizing to watch.
>> There certainly no robots in the world that can climb a pole like this. In fact, one thing you may have noticed is that the robot gingerly walks to the pole and then climbs up to it. It was able to exhibit that behavior transition.
>> Besides climbing around the pole, this snakebot outfitted with a camera can climb vertically through a tube like a drain pipe.
>> Let's say you wanna get a vantage point on top of a building for some reason, you can stick this in the drain pipe. It will go up to the top of the building and it can look out.
>> These bots are all designed for search and rescue and have already been used in disaster treading exercises around the world.
>> The idea is that there's this collapsed building and you wanna get in to this collapsed structure as quickly as possible in order to locate victims because it is very critical in the first 24 to 48 hours to find people. Just find them really saves their lives, bringing food and water and oxygen. That's icing on the cake.
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>> For Kara's full report visit News.com.
>> Starting today, you can challenge your Facebook friends to games through Kongregate, the casual gaming site. Kongregate's new Facebook application lets users earn points by playing and beating friends. Kongregate is really addicting and now that you can play people, you know I'm sure it will be even more addicting. I'm not sure I'll find this more of a time sucker than Scrabulous though, because I don't have the time for real time game play, but I'll give it a try.
>> Orange Telecom announced that it will be the official iPhone carrier in the Middle East, Africa, Central America and several other European countries. Sales will begin later this year, no doubt after the Next Generation launch in ten new markets. Orange has exclusive rights to the iPhone in Belgium and Romania, but co-exclusive or non-exclusive rights in the other countries.
>> HP said that it will launch a new line of products aimed at teenagers in time for back to school. The company didn't give many details, but they said that they've been holding Teen Councils to see what the kids want when it comes to technology.
>> You can now capture movies of your Play Station playing and upload them directly to YouTube. Sony took advantage of the new YouTube API and has made it possible for gamers to make movies of their characters playing other users within the video game and then upload them directly from the console. The New York Times is reporting that Apple is putting pressure on the music labels to release more ring tones. One label in particular told the Times that there may be some big announcement on June 9 around Steve Jobs keynote. There might also be an option for ring back tones, which means that your callers hear different songs when they call you, yet, another thing for us to hold our breath about for this upcoming keynote. Those are all your headlines for today. We're heading to Central Park right after today's show to test out the Wii Fit at Nintendo's launch event, so tune in tomorrow to see how that goes. I'm Natali Del Conte with CNET TV and you've just been loaded.
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